The result

In what was a very high turnout election, Democrats beat the Republicans by 7.1 points in the popular vote. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s margin was just 2 percentage points. So this was a five-point decline from what was already a low 2016 number. It was on par with other recent midterm ‘wave’ elections which had margins of 7.1 for the Republicans in 1994; 8.0 for the Democrats in 2006; 7.2 in 2010 and 5.7 in 2014 for the Republicans.

And it was enough to give the Democrats the House of Representatives, win seven governorships, and pick up 330 state legislative seats. Even in the Senate where Democrats lost ground, they won the popular vote in those races by 15 points (they got 57 percent of the popular vote; the Republicans – just 42 percent).